


Neal's Seven

by kriadydragon



Category: White Collar
Genre: Angst, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-18
Updated: 2011-03-18
Packaged: 2017-10-17 01:59:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/171765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kriadydragon/pseuds/kriadydragon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They get Neal back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Neal's Seven

**Author's Note:**

> Though similar in some ways to my story "Rain" these two stories are not related. Warnings: some violence

Two hours back to work after a week and a half of being laid-up with a dislocated shoulder, and Peter had no doubts he'd just put himself on suspension. He didn't care. The punch had felt good – as good as it could feel when he was throbbing with fury like Mt. Vesuvius about to erupt. But he had made sure to use his good hand, and Agent Daniels was sprawled on the floor, looking up at Peter like he really was a volcano ready to blow.

They were also in the break room, and it was empty.

“Damn it, Burke, what the hell!” Daniels squeaked.

“No,” Peter snarled. “No. You have no right. _No right_.”

“I have every damn right!” Daniels snarled back. Peter advanced and Daniels scuttled back, reaching out for the nearest chair to support the climb back to his feet. Once there, he held up his hand, warding Peter back with pathetic placations.

“This isn't my fault, Burke. This is Caffrey we're talking about. The kid's a friggin' cockroach – you step on him, he just comes back. He can handle himself.”

“Then why isn't he back, yet?” Peter said, looming over Daniels. “Huh? It's been a week, Daniels. They've had him for a week. _A week_! And you didn't tell me!”

“Because I had it under control!”

“A week is not having it under control!” Peter lunged for Daniels, would have grabbed him by the collar of his jacket if someone hadn't grabbed Peter and pulled him back. Their shouting match had been heard; the cavalry had arrived – Jones, Diana and several other agents either pulling Peter back or putting themselves in the line of fire between Peter and Daniels.

Peter had no idea what he was shouting anymore, Daniels still trying to shield against it with “I had everything under control!”

It took being dragged to the nearest empty room for Peter to finally gather what was left of his ragged control. It was just him, Jones and Diana, his junior agents saying nothing as they waited for their boss to catch both his breath and his cool. The latter wasn't happening. Peter paced, hands on his hips.

“Son of a bitch!” Then he kicked at the wall. He didn't care what it looked like, what it meant. It was hard to care about anything except what happened to Neal.

“We'll get him back, boss,” Diana said.

Peter scraped his hand through his hair. “Do we even know if he's still alive?”

“I'll find out,” said Jones tightly, already heading from the room.

There hadn't been time to get the details. Daniels had screwed up, acting on the assumption of the targets being dumber than they looked and their operation a joke. He had sent Neal in as a ridiculously rich tycoon looking to hire some cheap-ass smugglers. Neal had been taken somewhere, and Daniels had been under the belief that it was all part and parcel to the targets' operation. Three days later, Daniels got a call. It was the perps. They wanted to know what Daniels knew or the undercover agent gets a bullet to the brain. That had been a week ago.

Then Mt. Peter exploded and the rest of the story had been lost to his fist flying into Daniels' face. Peter's knuckles were starting to throb. Good. It gave him something else to focus on.

“I should have known,” Peter said, still pacing, shaking his head, clenching his fists. “He called me every damn day until a week ago and he's never been this deep undercover for this long.”

“None of us knew, boss,” Diana said calmly. But there was a flat edge to her tone, as though she were forcing her calm rather than allowing it to come naturally. She was just as pissed. “Wasn't our operation and you were on leave. We couldn't go near this thing. All we had was Daniels' word for it.”

But it wasn't enough. “I should have known.”

Jones returned, a scowl on his face. “Daniels has no idea of Neal is still alive, he just assumes he is.”

“Daniels assumes to much,” Peter growled.

Jones chuffed dryly. “And you know what they say about assumptions. Right now he's leaning toward Caffrey being alive. Apparently they let Caffrey talk over the phone the other day, and the demands are still coming in.”

“What're the demands?” Peter asked. With information finally on the table, his anger dissipated enough to let him think and focus on something other than his throbbing fist and Daniels' incompetence.

“Mostly they want to know what Daniels knows about their operation. They also want a safe exit out of the city. They know Daniels has roadblocks and APBs out. They'll give Caffrey back once they have their information and an escape route.”

Peter furrowed his brow. “And no one's traced the call?”

“Oh, they traced it. To ten different locations,” Jones said.

Peter gnawed his lip in thought. Something didn't add up. Daniels may have loved making assumptions but he hadn't gotten this far in his career riding the tail of lucky guesses. The guy was an idiot, but not that big of an idiot.

“I want every piece of intel Daniels has on these guys and I want it yesterday.”

Jones smirked. “Already called it in. Conference room?”

Peter grinned back. “In five minutes.” He loved having a team. “Let's get Neal back.”

\--------------------

The cheap, simple-minded smuggling operation had been a front, a shiny felony to keep the Feds looking the other way and happy in the belief that they had the upper hand. The fact that these guys had yet to actually be caught should have been the first wake up call. It wasn't a bust if the only ones busted were second-hand employees who didn't have a damn clue what was going on.

The people who had Neal were smart. Very smart. So damn smart that Peter had no doubts that this “hostage situation” was little more than the run around – a new shiny to keep the Feds' heads turned.

Peter didn't care. He just wanted Neal back.

Daniels played the suspects' game, took their calls, stalled them with tid-bits of info on the case and promises that he was looking into finding them a way out. Peter and his team looked into the group itself. He recruited Mozzie (more like Mozzie recruited him when his own search hit a dead end), and called in another favor from Sara. The way Peter figured it, if these guys were as good at smuggling as they pretended not to be, then it was possible they might've raised flags at Sterling and Bosch. It was a long shot, but Peter would take what he could get.

These guys didn't care about Neal. And people who didn't care about their hostage only kept that hostage for as long as they were useful. When no longer useful...

But that was the rub. This wasn't about getting demands met. This was about making the annoying agents look the other way. Four days later, whatever these guys were up to, it was happening. Someone called with an anonymous tip about a lot of activity at an abandoned warehouse. It was too quick, too easy, too damn cliché.

Peter and his team raided the warehouse, anyway. Peter and Jones found a cellar and a room within the cellar. The door to the room stainless steel, thick, brand new and unlocked. Peter and Jones burst in, shouting at the top of their lungs.

“Peter?” It was such a timid sound; plaintive, scared, hopeful and impossibly loud for being so weak. Peter froze. Jones aimed his flashlight in the voice's direction.

A skinny, dirty, disheveled Neal blinked owlishly up at them from the floor in the corner. He was dressed only in his undershirt and slacks – no jacket, no shoes, not even socks. His face was covered in a beard and bruises. One leg was tucked under him, the other stretched out in front. Both arms were wrapped around his stomach.

But he smiled at them.

“About time you got here,” he rasped.

Peter flinched. Then he moved to Neal. Dropping in a crouch in front of him, he took him by the shoulders, feeling his solidity, how real he was. How alive.

“Peter,” Neal said, slurring and swaying as though drunk. “You're my friggin' hero,” he laughed, then slumped, unconscious, into Peter's arms.

\----------------------

They had broken Neal's leg to keep him from running. It was a clean break just above the ankle, the bones still in one piece. It'll heal nicely, the doctor said. No complications.

They had broken Neal's leg. To make keeping him around easier on themselves.

They beat the crap out of him to take pictures and send to Daniels and make the situation more believable. Neal had broken ribs, and those hadn't been a clean break. One of them had been damn close to punching a hole in his lungs. They gave him food and water if they remembered to. He had a single blanket and no bed, and to save on electricity in a warehouse they weren't supposed to be using, they mostly kept the light off. The room had been old, filthy, full of rat crap. Neal had a respiratory infection that quickly turned into pneumonia.

Peter remembered Neal passing out into his arms, the way his body had shook, his unwashed stench making Peter's eyes water, the way the kid's breaths had rattled.

Neal had been like a rag doll; was still a rag doll even now stretched out on the hospital bed and hooked to machines. His breathing was wet in the silence and louder than the beep of the heart monitor. Sometimes his breaths and the monitor would speed up, his arms and face twitching.

Like now. Neal moaned.

Peter leaned in, placing his hand on Neal's tangled hair and smoothing it back.

“Shhhh. Neal. It's okay, buddy. You're safe. I've got you, you're safe.”

Neal calmed, his body going slack.

\--------------------------

“Think he'll be able to get over this?” Peter asked.

Mozzie shifted, possibly because the hard plastic chairs were hell on the tail bone, but Peter doubted it.

“Have you looked at him?” Mozzie snapped.

“You know what I mean.”

Mozzie fidgeted some more. “You know him just as well as I do.”

“You've known him longer. You've worked with him in ways he can't talk about with me because it could land him back in prison.”

“And I will remind you that, though he has told me many things, he hasn't told me everything.”

Peter glanced in the direction of Neal's room, currently off limits as Neal underwent a battery of tests that required Peter and Mozzie out of the way.

“It's not about telling,” Peter said. “It's about knowing. Understanding. You've seen Neal at his worst.” He held up his hand when Mozzi'es mouth opened to speak. “More times than me. I'm not asking for absolutes, here. I just want your opinion.”

Mozzie's mouth clicked shut. A candy-striper wandered by with a basket full of stuffed animals and colorful balloons, headed toward the kids ward.

“They beat him up and kept him alone in the dark,” Mozzie said hoarsely. He blinked, and was quiet in a moment of hesitant introspection. “But... he's tougher than he looks. I doubt prison had been a picnic.”

Peter had requested that the prison contact him if anything happened to Caffrey. Jail time had definitely been anything but a _picnic_.

“I don't know,” Mozzie said, stiff as though admitting defeat. “Logically... no, he won't be all right. Not for a while. He'll pretend he's all right, just like he pretended he was all right when Kate died. And we know how well that went. He's going to have issues.”

A nurse exited Neal's room, glanced around and on spotting them, waved them over. Neither man wasted a second answering that summons.

“We're almost finished but Mr. Caffrey is a little more alert and growing agitated,” she explained. “We're hoping a familiar presence might help.”

Peter looked at Mozzie. Mozzie glared at Peter, ready to take down the suit if it meant being the one there for Neal.

The nurse, translating the exchange as though it had been written on a billboard, smiled at them both. “You know what they say – two heads are better than one. I think two faces applies as well.”

They walked in to Neal upright with the help of a male nurse as a female nurse slipped a gown up his arms. He was pale, thin, bruised and looking painfully unsure of the situation, but on the plus side he was at least covered at the waist, giving him a modicum of dignity. Peter and Mozzie had been there, done that and understood the difference those modicums could make. But Peter doubted Neal noticed. If the kid could've bolted, he would have in a heart beat.

The nurse that had brought them strapped a blood pressure cuff around Neal's arm as soon as the gown was on. Neal flinched. The nurse glanced at the two men and ordered them to move closer with a curt twitch of her head.

Peter and Mozzie approached, Mozzie with a plaster smile and a too-chipper, “Hey, Neal.”

The effort paid off. Neal lifted his glazed eyes and his body relaxed. Then the cuff tightened and he tensed. The pads to the heart monitor were slipped beneath his gown and pressed to his chest, and he startled bad, trying to pull weakly away.

“Whoa, hey, buddy, easy there,” Mozzie said, rushing to Neal's side. He glared at the male nurse holding Neal up. “Do you mind?”

“We've got this,” Peter said more politely. The male nurse simply shrugged and left.

“Easy, pal,” Mozzie soothed, one hand clasping Neal's arm, the other resting above the knob of Neal's backbone where it met the neck. “You're okay. Right?”

Neal nodded, taking a deep breath interrupted by broken ribs, composing himself against the confusion, shakes and discomfort.

“Yeah,” Neal rasped. “I'm good.” But he wasn't good. The more the nurse did, the more Neal leaned inch by inch closer toward Mozzie. When the nurse was done and Neal was resting upright against a pile of pillows, if he could have curled into a ball, he would have. Then it was just him, Mozzie and Peter, and on realizing this Neal exhaled, long and slow, anxiety and tension going with it.

“I'm good,” Neal said.

\---------------------------

It was a toss-up: the Burke residence or the loft. Keeping Neal at the house meant having him right smack there for Elizabeth to mother to her heart's content, and Peter to watch like a hawk. But there would be long swaths of time when no one would be home, and like hell Peter was letting Mozzie have access to a “suit's” house without supervision.

The loft meant Neal a little more out of Peter's reach, but with room to move - to feel less confined - familiarity, within reach for June to mother and Mozzie able to hang around without incident.

The loft it was. Elizabeth wasn't happy about it at first. She easily compensated by taking the mothering to Neal. That meant dinners at Neal's, quiet time at Neal's...

And for the first two nights, sleepovers at Neal's. Mozzie cold have stayed with Neal and wanted to, but El was persistent.

Moz wasn't happy. Peter wasn't too thrilled himself, either, but he got it. The pneumonia had stripped Neal of a couple of more pounds. He didn't just look frail, he looked down right breakable, and no amount of tired smiling could hide the anxiety still heavy in his eyes. Leaving him alone... the idea by itself just didn't compute. As much as Peter preferred the comforts of his own home, self-gratification was stomped into the dust by the need to keep Neal in sight for as long as possible.

It was a good thing. A very good thing, Peter realized as he stood there helplessly, watching El, Neal's head in her lap, her hands sweeping back his hair as she talked him through his panic attack.

“That's it Neal, honey, breathe. Just keep breathing. You're all right. You're safe. We're here.”

Neal nodded, gulping in air as deep as his restricted chest would allow.

“It was dark,” he gasped. “I – I thought...”

“I know,” El soothed. “It's okay. You're safe.”

Neal's breathing slowed. It wasn't until twenty minutes later that he drifted back to sleep.

\-------------------------

“We've got 'em,” Diana announced as she, Jones and Sara Ellis walked into Neal's apartment.

Peter was shadowing Neal as he hobbled his way on crutches to the table. Mozzie and Elizabeth were at the kitchenette, Elizabeth filling a bowl with cinnamon Cream of Wheat. Neal looked up, nervous but with a hint of that old spark in his eyes, the one that showed up whenever they were steps away from taking down the bad guy.

They gathered around the table, where Elizabeth had to keep reminding Neal to eat every two minutes when he became too caught up in Diana's explanation to remember. They hadn't caught the guys who had hurt Neal, but they knew where they were, and thanks to Sara, knew who the real mastermind was; another rich guy, with millions gained through dishonesty painted as honesty. All the team needed was a way to bring him in.

The spark in Neal's eyes ignited. For the first time since finding him, his smile was huge and genuine. He had a plan. As usual, Peter was iffy but to take these bastards down, he listened. It was a good plan, as Neal's plans usually were, skirting the precipice of the law or not.

Just like old times.

Peter sent Diana and Jones to make the plan happen. Sara was about to follow, but stopped at the door, her arms folded and her gaze on Neal. Neal was being gently badgered by Elizabeth and hounded by Mozzie to have seconds of the Cream of White.

“Junior's looking better,” Sara said.

Peter remembered the first time she saw Neal at the hospital. He had thought she was going to be sick.

“How is he?” she asked softly.

Peter shrugged. “Doing better, actually. He still has trouble sleeping.” Waking in the night in a cold sweat, gasping for breath, calling out to anyone near enough to hear. That someone was now Mozzie, who complained about losing sleep as though it had become common place and, therefore, small talk. When he talked about having to hold on to Neal's shoulders while Neal remembered how to breathe, of Neal shaking and sometimes unable to go back to sleep, he always did so with a catch in his voice.

Sara chewed on her lip, then said,” He's tougher than he looks.” She gave a nervous laugh. “I'd be a bawling wreck if it had been me. I hate to admit it but... there you go.” She smiled sadly at Peter. “Keep taking care of him.” And she left.

Back at the table, Neal was finishing seconds.

\------------------------

Peter stepped onto the balcony, smiling so big his face hurt. “We've got him.”

Neal hobbled around to face him. His expression wasn't what Peter had expected. He'd been expecting smug; a million watt smile and “told you my plan would work” shining in his eyes. Instead, for a moment, Neal looked awestruck, as though he didn't believe it. Then he relaxed, truly relaxed as though he had been bracing himself all this time and was now drained of whatever energy he had left. He moved to the small table. Peter moved quickly pulling out the chair to receive Neal.

Neal sat, leaned his crutches against the table, then sighed. “Good to hear.” It was quite the understatement. Neal's twitchy smile said so.

Peter patted Neal's back, felt the bumps of his spine not quite covered up, yet. Then he took the adjacent seat.

“Okay, there, Neal?” he asked.

Neal's smile turned genuine. Tired, but genuine.

“Am, now,” he said. He dropped his gaze to the table, working at some smudge with his finger, making the smudge worse but at least giving him something to do.

“I've been beaten up before, you know,” he said. Reluctant, Peter thought. “Locked up. Been in some pretty dark places, too, wondering if I'd ever see daylight again.”

“This your long winded way of telling me to stop worrying about you?” Peter cut in. “Because it's not helping.”

Neal chuffed. “No.” He took a breath, held it, then slowly released it. “I just... I've been there before and... I didn't always have someone to get me out. Make it... make it better, you know?” His eyes flickered to and from Peter. “Thank you. For getting me out. And for everything that followed. And for finding those guys and... Thanks.”

A moment of awkward silence followed. After that moment, Neal cleared his throat. “So. When do you think I can get back to work? Much as I love the time off, limping around the house and not doing anything is getting pretty old.”

Peter grinned. “I'll find you some new board games to pass the time.”

“Goody. New ways for Mozzie to cheat.”

Peter chuckled, shaking his head. “How about El and I take you out to dinner, put some meat back on your bones in style.”

Neal's smile could have lighted up the dark. “Now you're talking.”


End file.
